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If transit could be planned one line at a time, city council’s vote last week to build the Scarborough subway extension could be deemed a success. However, public transit works much better when it is planned and built as a network. And networked thinking is what has been missing in the transit debate in Toronto.

The Scarborough subway extension may attract more passengers to public transit, but this will not add capacity to the existing congested subway network. The result of such haphazard planning will ultimately be longer wait and commute times for transit users, and commutes by public transit in Canada are already 81 per cent longer in duration than those by cars.

What is needed in the GTA is greater co-ordination among transit planning authorities. Also, subway expansions should both improve the system’s ability to meet existing transit demands and support and serve planned increases in population and employment densities. In addition, transit planning has to be mindful of the demographic and commuting trends in the region. We offer the following considerations for those entrusted with improving transit service in the region.

First, we need to understand the difference between expanding the transit network and adding transit capacity. The two are not necessarily synonymous. Subway extension expands transit service but does not add capacity in the most congested segments of the network.

Heading south from Sheppard station or commuting to the Bloor-Yonge Station on the Bloor-Danforth line during peak periods is an arduous task for transit riders given the extreme congestion levels. Adding more transit riders to these already congested corridors will further burden the transit system. Therefore, the need to increase capacity is paramount.

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Signal, station and track improvements are the best way to improve the subway system’s carrying capacity. These would make possible more frequent operation of subway trains, resulting in significantly higher passenger volumes.

The other promising alternative to add capacity is the downtown relief line (DRL), to take pressure off the downtown Yonge line. A line branching south from the Danforth line and connecting with Union Station would allow commuters heading downtown to avoid the overcrowded Bloor-Yonge Station and the Yonge line south of Bloor.

Although subways have the highest carrying capacity of all modes of urban transit, this only happens if they are routed correctly. Consider the different traffic volumes on the Yonge and University lines — high on Yonge and low on University. This is a direct result of land-use changes and increases in employment and population densities along the Yonge line.

In contrast, even after decades of operation, there has been no significant improvement in population or employment densities along the University line. This is evidence of a lost opportunity that should not be repeated in subway expansion in Scarborough.

Subway extension in Scarborough should be carried out with two goals in mind.

First, the expanded subway should serve existing travel demands better than the current Scarborough RT.

Second, the corridor chosen should have the potential to experience increased employment and population densities. High-density employment nodes would result in the more efficient use of the added transit capacity by facilitating reverse commutes to transit hubs in Scarborough.

While all politics is local, it does not have to be parochial. Essentially, some councillors in the downtown core, who voted no, see transit as a priority only when it serves their constituents. Such limited vision will not help transit in the region, especially when transit networks extend beyond the city’s limit into constituencies where the car is king.

Lastly, one cannot ignore demographics while planning transit. The growth in work trips to downtown Toronto between 1986 and 2006 has come mostly from the York, Peel and Durham regions. Downtown trips from the inner suburbs have, in fact, declined.

This suggests that extending the subway into Scarborough could have limited success in attracting additional transit users because workers living in Scarborough may be travelling to suburban employment destinations.

Given that it costs billions of dollars to build public transit, any mistake in planning will be a huge burden on taxpayers. If planners and politicians focus on improving transit service and performance in the entire network, they are less likely to make mistakes.

Murtaza Haider is associate dean of research and graduate programs at the Ted Rogers school of Management, Ryerson University. David Crowley is a Toronto-based planner with over four decades of experience in transport planning.

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